Technical Field
This disclosure relates to a material conveyor that conveys a material such as a transfer target sheet, a transfer device that conveys the material, an image forming apparatus incorporating the transfer device including the material conveyor, a method of position control of rotary bodies in the material conveyor, and a non-transitory computer readable storage medium for performing the method of position control of the rotary bodies.
Related Art
In known image forming apparatuses including two rotary bodies to contact an image bearer such as an intermediate transfer belt to form a transfer nip region, when a recording medium passes through the transfer nip region, it is likely to cause shock jitters, which are linear image density nonuniformity. The linear image density nonuniformity occurs when a recording medium enters or exits the transfer nip region, due to abrupt change of a load to the image bearer to greatly change a linear velocity of the image bearer instantly.
In order to address this inconvenience, a known image forming apparatus includes a configuration in which shock jitters are reduced by adjusting an amount of separation (gap) between an intermediate transfer belt and a secondary transfer roller in contact with each other, according to a detected thickness of the recording medium.